With Strings: Live at Town Hall

Striking while the double-album iron's hot, Eels follow last year's Blinking Lights with this intimate string quartet-backed recording of recent material and covers.

Double albums are the gateway drugs of rock music. Sure, all the other bands say you can't get addicted, and they may be right-- after all, how many bands have done two double albums? But what those "friends" don't tell you is that the double album is the first step on the path to rock star excess, leading inevitably to hiring Phil Spector as a producer, a dalliance with some kind of exotic religion, and the sudden compulsion to do something "multimedia." Years later, you find yourself choreographing a rock opera performed on ice, and thinking, "Oh, if only I hadn't made that seemingly innocent choice to not edit my album down to one disc. Woe!"

Is it too late to save Eels from this path of meteoric destruction, now that they've foolishly indulged in the double album with last year's Blinking Lights and Other Revelations? Early evidence is discouraging, as they already exhibit two symptoms of long-term effects upon good judgment: the borderline innocuous "live album," and the much more worrisome "with strings." Such words often portend the addition of Michael Kamen to the rolodex, a move towards Moody Blues-style hyper-orchestration, or tour dates at the Acropolis.

Fortunately, Eels letterman Mark Everett (more commonly known as just "E") is partial to minimal arrangements, a tendency that keeps him from ordering up 75-piece orchestra buckets and slathering crescendos onto every chorus. In fact, the "strings" of this album's title are merely a humble quartet, and despite second billing, their contributions are kept subtle, balanced well against the pile of musical toys that E and his unclassically trained companions pluck and bang. There aren't any overtures or Copland quotes, just 19 Eels songs (mostly from Blinking Lights) and three covers, rearranged for a drum-less orchestra-geek lineup.

The scarcity of percussion on all but a handful of With Strings' tracks lends the entire set a ghostly feel, which works both for and against E's vision. On one hand, here's hoping Town Hall was a seated venue; unless there were some serious pyrotechnics, it may have been a rough haul for audience members working on a short night's sleep. Yet, the sparse arrangements turn out some fascinating moments, with the strings often used as background color while singing saw, pump organ, or vibraphone hits take the starring role. A medley of "Flyswatter" with the obligatory (but disassembled) "Novocaine for the Soul" successfully wraps all these elements together, a stretch that sounds spookily improvised in contrast to the chart-reading restrictions of the set's bulk.

Still, the most electric moments come when the band momentarily shakes off the drear and lets loose: the sharp found-object drumming of Blinking Lights' finest track "Trouble With Dreams," or the respectful cover of the Left Banke's "Pretty Ballerina", which allows the strings to finally swoop. I'm déjà vu-ing myself here, but these sparkly, weird, subversive pop moments far outshine the too-frequent occasions in which E fancies himself a folk singer, obsessed with working-class imagery and leaning too hard on his Velcro rasp of a voice.

So go ahead and grant the Eels an exemption for going the orchestra tour route; the additional personnel justifies their paychecks by saving this live album from being a rote greatest-hits-with-crowd-noise exercise. The record's occasional dragging moments stem less from Boston Pops syrup than from E's maudlin stumbles, or the sometimes oppressively uniform melancholy he prefers. For now, Eels have put the brakes on the slide down the slippery slope of rock clichés, but beware: the lingering effects of double-album experimentation aren't so easily undone.